“I always tell folks my roots are in a place called Eutaw, Alabama, but I was born and raised in Mobile. I’m named after my grandmother—Tempey Daisy Hamilton—and I’m the granddaughter of a sharecropper. My mom was the baby of thirteen kids. She was too young to pick cotton like my aunts did; her job was to ride the horse and pass around the water to everyone in the fields.
My family was active in the Civil Rights movement and picketed in Greene County. My grandparents housed horses in the back of their property for the Poor People’s Campaign mule train.
Several places shaped me. Growing up in Mobile, I was a little sneaky. I could get away with things because I was an athlete and a good student, making A’s and B’s. No one pays attention to the kid doing well in school, so I’d sneak off to see my girlfriends while everyone thought I was just being a ‘good kid.’ Meanwhile, my mom pieced together great opportunities for me. I went to Murphy High School, played basketball at Spring Hill College, and eventually found my way to social work at the University of Alabama…